The Spitfire's engine coughed, twice, and died.
“No!” Connie shouted, as if she could keep the plane in the air through sheer willpower.
She knew this plane inside and out. She'd worked on every part of it with her own two hands. Now she used that encyclopedic knowledge, drawing on every trick she knew as the Spitfire fell like a dying star.
Screaming defiance, Connie leveled out the wings, stopping the plane's sickening spin. But it was still falling like a stone, nose-first, straight down. If the plane hit the sea like that, it would be like slamming into solid rock. The Spitfire would explode into a million pieces.
Connie inched the plane's nose up, fighting gravity tooth and nail. Agonizingly slowly, the plane responded, straightening up.
If I can just straighten it out… skim across the water like a skipping stone...
Even as she wrestled with the controls, she knew it was futile. Even hitting the water belly-first rather than nose-first, the plane would still sink—in one piece, perhaps, but it was still doomed.
The only sensible thing to do was to hit the eject button. To abandon the plane, and save herself.
NO!
The hungry sea rushed up, eager to swallow both her and the Spitfire in one mouthful. Closing her eyes, Connie prepared to die with her plane.
Glass shards cascaded over her as the cockpit exploded. Connie had only the briefest impression of something huge and black lunging at her, before it grabbed her by the collar of her flight suit. With a powerful tug, it yanked her straight out of the cockpit.
Connie's feet swinging sickeningly over empty air. The… thing had her by the scruff of the neck. Her flight suit cut into her armpits, constraining her as she tried futilely to see what had grabbed her. She dangled as helpless as a kitten carried by its mother.
Then it dropped her.
Screaming, Connie flailed helplessly as she plummeted toward the sea. She only fell for a moment, though, before landing solidly on a broad, warm back. Sobbing in terror, Connie clutched at the horse's gleaming black neck.
Wait a second.
…A horse?
Connie raised her face, unable to believe the evidence of her senses. Yet she was, undeniably, sitting on a horse. A winged horse. It had magnificent, iridescent blue-black feathers, like an enormous raven. Its long mane whipped at her face as it flew steadily onwards.
I've died, Connie thought blankly. I've crashed and burned and now I'm dead. And a big winged horse is carrying me up to Heaven.
“Are you an angel?” she asked the horse, her voice quavering uncontrollably.
The horse curved its neck, one intelligent black eye looking back at her. It let out an unmistakably amused snort.
And suddenly, impossibly, Connie knew exactly what it was. Or rather, who it was.
“Chase?”
The horse nickered, tossing its head in a nod.
It was too much. The inexplicable disaster, the crash, Chase turning into a winged horse… her overloaded brain simply gave up, refusing to try to make sense of any of it.
Connie put her cheek against Chase's warm, black neck, closed her eyes, and let him carry her away from it all.
#
If Connie had been capable of being surprised anymore, she would have been startled by how fast Chase's broad wings carried them back to Brighton. It took less time to get back than it had taken to fly out in the Spitfire. Soon they were once again soaring over the beach and promenade—but this time, no one squinted upward at them, pointing and waving. Pedestrians carried on about their business without even an upward glance as the winged horse's shadow swept over them.
Connie was beyond wondering about everyone's curious incuriosity to the impossibility soaring over their heads. Her mind and body had both gone numb. Only one thought repeated in her head, over and over, inescapably.
I lost my mother's plane.
I lost my mother's plane.